A recent editorial cartoon by Jeff Koterba of the Omaha World-Herald shows a bearded motorcyclist and his hog, labeled Sturgis, riding across a map of the United States, spewing Covid clouds in place of exhaust fumes.
The drawing predates a study by the Center for Health Economics and Policy Studies at San Diego State University. It suggests the South Dakota motorcycle rally in August may have spawned more than 260,000 positive coronavirus tests.
Those numbers are at odds with other tallies of the rally’s impact on the Covid pandemic. South Dakota’s own count is that 124 residents became sick with the virus after the event in Sturgis, which had an estimated attendance of 365,979 people over ten days. (Some sources put attendees at over 400,000.)
As a story from the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, a USA Today Network paper, made clear, the discrepancy in the two counts comes from the different methodologies used for each.
The San Diego State study examined areas of the country where the most people traveled to the rally. Statisticians then compared positive test results after those visitors returned home. Cell-phone data was used, in part, to determine who went to Sturgis.
The South Dakota Department of Health reached its much more conservative numbers — pun intended, I suppose — via contact tracing.
The truth likely resides somewhere between 124 and 260,000. It beggars the imagination to think that so many attendees, many of whom appeared to be tooling around sans masks and without social distancing, could generate only ten dozen cases.
But it’s also unfair to suggest that the jump in Covid cases across parts of the Midwest is due exclusively, or even primarily, to one motorcycle rally, no matter the size.
Medical experts quoted in a Washington Post story from Sept. 2 note the Midwest’s apathy for mask-wearing in general, along with residents’ resumption of wedding, funeral and party attendance. Everybody wants to get back to “ordinary,” which is an entirely ordinary reaction, even in extraordinary times.
The same Washington Post story reports one death and 260 cases in 11 states with connections to the Sturgis rally, which health officials dubbed an undercount.
No matter how carefully one discusses such figures, remembering that behind each is a real person with an affected family and livelihood, it is easy to grow numb to the sheer profusion of numbers and the various ways that people spin them.
Covid deniers will split hairs over the CDC’s recent release of the number of Americans who have died solely of Covid, a figure below 10,000, arguing that the other 180,000 (and counting) fatalities are people who have died “with” Covid, not “of” Covid.
Would these people, with comorbidities such as diabetes, asthma and obesity, have died anyway in the last six months, even without contracting coronavirus? Some, undoubtedly. But if not for Covid, many — indeed most — could still be with us, as people with these conditions can live quality lives for decades.
Deniers will also break out arguments similar to the South Dakota ones — people who comply with mask mandates and social-distancing requirements are “sheeples” who should just stay home and let everybody else go about their business, this is a “plandemic” with a Nov. 3 expiration date, etc. etc.
It doesn’t help that the nation is led by a man who, on one hand, mocks masks and does not encourage their use during his rallies, and who, on the other, promises an expedited vaccine on a timeline that even the most optimistic researchers say is unlikely.
Covid believers, meanwhile, will cite ever-higher estimates of 300,000 dead by Dec. 1, fears over the upcoming flu season, and arguments about how putting kids and young adults back in school and on college campuses exacerbates the problem.
Between the no-problem and Grand Canyon-sized problem people — just as between the Sturgis counts of 124 and 260,000 — exists a middle ground of health experts who say that we can mostly rejoin our previous lives, already in progress (as the old TV disclaimer goes), as long as we wear masks, wash our hands often, limit large gatherings and stay home when sick.
This means compromise — life back to mostly normal, yet with changes that pinch a little socially and financially. But we don't compromise very well in this country these days, unfortunately.
Instead, we all like to be on our metaphorical hogs, tearing around and making a lot of noise about either ignoring all precautions or shutting it all down again.
Both extremes are roads that lead to failure.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
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